Le Rendez-vous des Artistes

- a Public Garden Design

During the course Scénographie et Logistique, following an onsite tour to an abandoned garden in Rennes, we have been arranged to design a garden reuse plan within the group of 7. This time, I cooperated with my classmates Ana, Andréa, Margaux, Sarah, Margot and Laurie.

This is a public garden shared by the School of Fine Arts (EESAB) and the National Choreographic Center of Rennes and Brittany (CCNRB). Our goal is to create a space for conviviality, which makes the public want to come regularly, putting forward the local cultural actors to create a social link between artists and public. Finally we would like to bring together the people of Rennes through events and create culture accessible to all.

Based on that, our group of 7 begin to search for information and look for inspiration online trying to set down a tone of the garden and decide a general style. We finally decide on a simple wooden style mixed with the color purple, blue and green, representing the nature yet sending off a lively power.

As for the events in the garden, we decide to have four different types of events based on the organizations and our potential partners nearby: music, dance, short-film and permaculture. We chose to set a common guide around the four events: Transcendence. Transcendence is defined as the fact of surpassing oneself, trying to go beyond one's limits and thus surpassing oneself. Through our four events, we invite the public as well as the artists to give the best of themselves but especially to try to surpass themselves by going out of their comfort zone. We want these events to be moments of sharing, conviviality and encounter.

Through the project, we go through the process of background research(investigate the garden, analyse the situation of different organizations and potential partners), inspiration(online artwork research), general design and detailed design(set the style and design the furniture and maps), and finally the events planning and implementation. It’s a comprehensive practice which requires everyone in the group to innovate and create while use the individual talent to focus on a specific task.

This project gives us a vivid and direct experience to think about the aesthetic and practical design of a garden. On one hand, we have to provide a position of the garden: how could it attract people to come, what’s its uniqueness? What might be its "Selling Point"? Based on the core value of the garden, the events should be designed to represent this value while considering plainly the current resources(partners and the practicality of the event). On the other hand, a style and the appearance of the garden is also important. It should appear to go with those events and at the same time provide the space for people to appreciate.

That’s how we should always think about the harmony during the design. Harmony within those events, harmony between the activities and the general construction of the garden.

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Pictures from: the group of Ana Arsenie, Andréa Guilloux, Ye Lin, Margaux Meskinia, Sarah Messbah, Margot Rouiller, Laurie Segalowitch